The present invention relates generally to power management of mobile devices, which are powered by a battery power source. In particular, the invention relates to power management of a mobile device used to provide a medical service, such as measurement of blood glucose levels of a diabetic patient or other physiological monitoring of the patient/user, control of dosing devices such as perfusion pumps, intravenous fluid pumps, transmission of patient monitoring data to a remote center, etc.
Current mobile devices such as cellphones, tablet computers, personal digital assistants, laptop computers, etc. can be adapted to carry out a wide range of functions and perform a wide variety of services. Such devices can be enabled with software applications to carry out medical-related services such as the services mentioned above. Such devices are typically battery-powered and thus have a finite operating time before the battery goes dead and must be recharged. If the patient is not at a location where the device may be plugged into an electrical outlet, critical medical services may not be able to be provided. Such devices typically have the capability of performing multiple services simultaneously, such as cellphone services, email services, music player services, video player services, internet browsing, game playing, etc. If such a device is performing a critical medical service to a patient/user of the device while the device also is performing other services, battery power will be consumed at a faster rate. Consequently it would be desirable to have the ability to reduce or eliminate the power being consumed by non-critical or non-important services used on such a device, when the device also is being used to provide a critical medical service for the patient/user, and remaining battery power is approaching a low level.